Susan Senator
All happy families are not alike...
All happy families are not alike...
A Vacuum of Good Sense
I am beginning to really worry about B again. I had to reschedule his birthday party for this weekend, because it was just a small number of boys, and half couldn’t go. Well, tomorrow, only two can really go again! I have called and tried to get the other two to come even for an hour, or for me to come and get them and bring them home if it’s hard for the parents, but this just breaks my heart. I don’t get it. I guess people make plans, get overwhelmed, but this is such bad timing for Ben.
It has been such a polarized year for him. Wonderful personal growth coupled with a terrible difficulty with the high-pressure fourth grade curriculum. That sounds like a joke, but it’s totally serious and pathetically so. I am getting extremely disillusioned with my “wonderful” school system, which is turning into the pressure cooker wet dream of the highly-standardized fascist/fetishist. What is with education today? Partly it is the economy, partly, the crazed, grasping mandates of No Child Left Behind. NCLB, the Bush-reauthorized ESEA, calls for mastery in both math and reading of all children by 2010, and most of the states in the country have designated their high-stakes exit exams to be the arbiter of mastery. This, in essence, removes most or all of the control over curriculum and graduation from local control (school boards and school committees) and gives it all to the state and federal government. Schools, then, are scared shitless that they are going to be deemed “failing” simply because certain of their populations cannot pass the state standardized exams. So now most school systems teach to the tests, drill and kill, and, in this era of tax cuts for the wealthiest and the least public funding of education in decades, they cut their “specials,” the arts, the softer subjects, the areas where alternative types like Benji may excel. All that matters, in so many school systems these days, is math and English, with maybe some science thrown in. Whatever is on the state’s test, that is what the schools will emphasize because they don’t want to be taken over by the state.
I’m serious. This is what No Child Left Behind calls for, ultimately: sanctions against “failing schools.” And the standard by which they measure our schools is most often one, high-pressure exam. Such legislation rides roughshod over Individualized Education Plans, or English as as Second Language-learners, or children who do not grow up in test-prep highly educated suburbs.
All in the name of preparing them for “the real world.” The soft bigotry of low expectations, my ass. So now what we have is the harsh bigotry of insane standards. There is such an insane drive to get kids to be able to succeed in the “real world.” But the thing is, the real world is our doing. We are the adults. The real world didn’t just happen in a vacuum. (Oh wait, the universe actually did begin in kind of a vacuum…or maybe it’s just going to end in a vacuum? Something like that. )
Sometimes the Real Worldniks remind me of that guy in Yellow Submarine, who sucks up
everything in his path, and eventually, finding nothing else left to suck, he sucks up himself, and the entire picture, until you’re into a different scene altogether.
Frankly, I’m a little sick of the real world. Enough, already, as my grandmother would say.
Time for the winds of change to push the pendulum in the other direction. Or some such group of cliches.
Time to dance and be thankful for weekends. And hug my boy, if he’ll let me.
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There is a great internet joke making the rounds called, “No Dentist Left Behind”…
Your frustration with public education is understandable. As a fellow parent it’s especially reasonable that we all want our kids to have an experience molded to nurture and gently but firmly motivate our kids.
But that’s not possible, nor does it reflect how the “real world” will treat our kids when they venture into adulthood.
My mom taught fifth grade for nearly 40 years. You can ask around, but I assure you she was one of the most highly celebrated teachers in the town, and even the state. Her method of teaching was based on tough love, meaning she pushed each of her students to be better than they thought they could be, but understood each kid was an individual. If a gifted student was coasting along with ease, she forced them to take upon special projects to make their brains hurt. If a student was struggling, she would literally spend half of each day working with them individually to ensure they could grasp the basic concepts upon which their future educational experience would depend.
No Child Left Behind came along, and it made her alter her curriculum. She detested NCLB because it forced her to “teach to the test.” But when asked directly to answer a courtroom-like question with a yes or a no, she agreed that yes, NCLB was for the best if you cast a wide net. It helps more kids that need it, although it completely strips “good” teachers of doing what they do best — teaching kids on an individual basis.
I plead guilty of being the person responsible for posing the courtroom question. She and I would have heated debates about the subject. The educational experience of my two boys are very different. One is stunningly brilliant, but bored to tears and only applies himself enough to miraculously pull out a few final “A” grades, a “B” or two, and mostly “C” grades after horrid mid-term reports chock full of “D” grades in all subjects. He’s a voracious reader and regularly takes me aback by making razor sharp observations about literature which belies his years. My other son is an extremely creative thinker, would rather spend an hour observing an ant hill rather than studying, but is a straight “A” student. I honestly cannot recall him ever receiving a “B” or less. But he works for it. The curriculum is just hard enough that it challenges him, but no so hard nor so easy that he’s frustrated. He’s bored with school …. he strives to find things that engage him.
Both of my boys would benefit by the individual teaching style my mother (and I’m sure countless other quality teachers) would utilize. One would blossom by being challenged — not brutally, but in a manner in which he would eagerly accept. The other should be given the freedom and glorious experience of being allowed to explore subjects which pique his interest. He’s not being pushed, but he’s getting along. That’s not education, that’s working the system.
This is a long way to go for a simple point. The point is that this is the system we’ve got. Public schools have a core responsibility to take kids in one door, and send them out the other door with a core understanding of how to read, write, and calculate a simple equation. That’s it. There’s no glossing the proverbial turd, and I wish it could be somehow more inspiring, but that’s it.
For decades public schools churned out millions of undereducated flunkies who would be hard pressed to file a 1040 EZ. The NCLB Act holds the educational system’s feet to the fire. The vast majority of kids MUST be able to demonstrate basic mastery of the essential skills. That’s why we have public schools … to ensure that kids — all kids, not just our individual kids — are educated.
The cost for the piper is that many kids, like my boys and like B, won’t get the individualized attention from which they would benefit immensely. So be it. The alternatives are either home schooling (don’t get me started on that) or private school. If I could afford it I’d love to send my kids to private school, but I can’t.
My children (and I expect B) will one day graduate from public schools with a solid educational foundation. Moreover, they will have learned that often times the world sets out a system to which they must either acclimate or fail. That’s life. Yes, it’s not exactly the best we as a society could do, but that’s the way it is.
When you said that “there is such an insane drive to get kids to be able to succeed in the ‘real world.’ But the thing is, the real world is our doing. We are the adults. The real world didn’t just happen in a vacuum.”
Very true, but the the real world isn’t Utopia. Schools cost a lot of money, most often the majority of a town’s budget. To create an educational system in which each child was taught as an individual rather than as a member of a group, the costs would be astronomical. Unreasonably astronomical.
I understand and can empathize with your frustration. But it’s the real world.
Sorry for the rant. I have much more to say on the subject, but now I’m suddenly feeling awkward about posting such a long comment on YOUR blog, Susan!
Among the many problems with NCLB is that it straightjackets good teachers
like Don’s mom and does not improve the practices of poor teachers. It’s
more likely to degrade the quality of instruction across the board than
improve anything.
Don writes: “For decades public schools churned out millions of
undereducated flunkies who would be hard pressed to file a 1040 EZ. The NCLB
Act holds the educational system’s feet to the fire. The vast majority of
kids MUST be able to demonstrate basic mastery of the essential skills.
That’s why we have public schools … to ensure that kids — all kids, not
just our individual kids — are educated.”
That’s a good summary of the rationale for NCLB, but since the law’s
implementation, the research shows a very different picture of the law’s
results. For instance, the national test that is being used as a yardstick
for comparison, NAEP, shows English and math scores were improving faster
BEFORE NCLB and now are flattening out.
A new study out of Texas shows more minority students leaving school because
the law’s focus on improving test results creates an incentive for schools
to either push low-scoring students out or turn a blind eye when they leave.
When low scorers leave the building, the building’s test results look better
and the teachers and administrators are literally rewarded with bonuses.
The research shows NCLB narrowing curriculum to what’s on the tests, so that
other important areas like social studies, art, music, gym and even recess
are being lost, and the ones who are losing them first and most severely are
poor minority kids.
The best thing about NCLB is its name because nobody wants to leave anybody
behind. The problem is the evidence is showing the law is leaving more
people behind than ever, not to mention driving teachers out of the
profession and creating a real crisis for public education.
There are much better ways to provide real accountability for public
schools, methods that don’t cause the litany of horrors described so
eloquently by Jonathan Kozol in his books, Shame of the Nation and Letters
to a Young teacher. Kozol describes that many U.S. schools are almost
completely segregated, a kind of apartheid schooling in which poor black
kids get the most rigid, rote, punitive and disengaging kind of instruction
and the schools that are still holding on to some semblance of creative,
engaging teaching are affluent suburban schools that serve mostly white
kids. He talks about schools completely driven by fear of not reaching the
NCLB’s demands for test score improvement, where the fear is passed down
from superintendent to principal to teachers to students and their parents.
Teachers will attest to all of this, but often only anonymously, because of
fear of being punished for speaking the truth. Here’s what one anonymous
teacher wrote recently: “The upper
echelons enervate the next level down so that they come back to the schools
with a sense of desperation that they pass on to the teachers, who become
discouraged from lack of control, lack of respect, and, increasingly, by
lack of time to accomplish Job One. That job, if reminding is needed, is
making education thrilling, compelling, meaningful, and successful. That job
is engaging learners with each other and with the content. That job is
knowing the students and caring about them and their families. That job is
being undermined every single day by people whose jobs should be eliminated
because they are subverting the real work.”
Is this what we want for public education?
Lisa G.
I wish that my mom were still alive to sit down with Lisa, have a glass of wine, and talk about education. Since she’s not here, I’d be happy to take upon that task!
I completely agree with you that what we want from public education is not what most of us are receiving. Again, it all boils down to money + majority = the system.
NCLB indeed does a horrible job of serving individual needs. Underachievers, overachievers, and even the kids in the middle are all somewhat screwed by the system. But it’s important to have some sort of a federal oversight of the educational system. How does one measure success for millions of students?
You could use graduation rates. That would mean that the majority — yes, the majority — of Detroit’s school system and kids are failures. You could also use metrics such as a basic GPA median, but that unfairly skews data toward inner city populations and away from traditionally better educational systems in wealthier suburbs. The last option is to institute mandatory testing, or NCLB.
I wholeheartedly agree that the system, as it is today, sucks. It addresses everybody, but serves nobody. It’s easy to be frustrated, it’s easy to wish for something better, and it’s easy to wish that there would be millions of impassioned teachers with the desire to TEACH, not to meet requirements.
It all comes down again and again to money and demographics. It’s what we’ve got. It isn’t great, but it’s expensive. Really expensive. The alternatives are private schools, charter schools, home schooling, or tax increases.
None of those options puts a smile on my face.